Continuing our Twenty Bucks series, which looks at what $20 can actually get you in various ‘free’ games, Jim focuses his wallet on Planetside 2. Can he pay to win? Why does his jeep look like a giraffe?

These and many other questions are answered below.

Planetside 2 suffers from a virtual currency.

This currency is Station Cash, which is an in-game currency which can be spent in a number of SOE games, Planetside 2 included. This fact immediately obfuscates our project, because you have to buy amounts of Station Cash, rather than the actual dollar (or Sterling) cost of the items in question. 2000 Station Cash is £15 for me, therefore closer to $24, and therefore close enough, I suppose.

There’s another variable to complicate things. While you can buy all kinds of things in the “Depot” – things which we will detail in a moment – you could alternatively spend your money on a subscription, which gives you great amounts of resources and XP. This comes to £9/month, or down to £6.49 a month if you buy into a full year. Having a subscription basically means that you can earn “certs”, the in-game points you can spend on things, much faster. Most of the things you can buy with money, you can also buy with certs (although some of the things you can buy with certs, basically skills, you cannot buy with money). This means any purchase you make has to be weighed against how fast you are making XP, and whether or not the time investment outweighs the real cash commitment. A subscription, therefore, makes more sense if you play the game for a great number of hours.

What this means is that many people will play Planetside 2 without ever grazing on the pastures of the depot, because they just don’t have to. Others, meanwhile, will unlock all kinds of weapons and other fixings by paying a mix of cash and certs. It’s a system that is entirely optional, and while it does allow you to unlock game-changing things such as weapons, none of these really counts as paying to win. I get plenty of kills with the base, free weapons, and those I unlocked with certs. The only reason to buy, then is to have a greater breadth of possible experiences with the game, and also to have a greater array of tools at my disposal faster than I would if I unlocked them all manually.

Anyway! Let’s begin with the items that only money can buy, and that’s the cosmetic upgrades. These have no effect in the game world, aside from making you look a bit tough, or a bit silly. There are plenty of different helmet designs, and since I really do like using my medic, I might well go for the banded skull design. I’ve already got a couple of other helmets, but this one rounds out my collection of tough-guy head ornamentation rather nicely. It costs a formidable 500SC, which is about £3.70 ($5.80). £3.70! I can hear my penny-pinching grandmother tutting about such profligacy from here.

There are a bunch of other ways to make your soldier look more intimidating, and chief among these are the composite armour types. These are available for all classes, and, like many other items, are routinely featured in the sales. Ah yes, sales. This is the point at which things in Planetside 2 actually seem worth getting. And that’s doubtless SOE’s strategy here: to make everything a bit pricey, only to make it seems reasonable when the price is temporarily slashed. The Light Assault armour is on sale today for just under a quid, so about $1.40, but even at that price I’m not going to go for it. The simple reason for that being that I almost never play as light assault, even though they have a jetpack. Such class-specific trappings make themselves unpurchasable if you play like I do.

We still haven’t spent much of our $20 at this point, but not to worry, because there’s a bunch of other things we could pick up – things that actually have some real impact on my game experience.

The first thing I want to do is have a look at these NS rifles. You’ll see that I am playing with a Vanu character – purplest of three factions in the game – and the unlocks for me are different for those for other factions. Each faction has a unique set of weapons that has rough equivalents in the depots of its counterparts, but they also all share the NS weapons, which are faction neutral. I’ve been hankering for an alternative to my blistering H-V45 assault rifle, so the first thing I looked at is the NS-11A, which has rather similar stats. This in turn can be upgraded with new scopes and recoil dampeners, and it’s an extremely tempting purchase. However, for £5.20 or $8.15, I am going to want something that actually changes my experience somewhat. This is simply too close to the H-V45.

Perhaps a new pistol? The NS-44G Commissioner looks good. But holy god it looks expensive. 2000SC! That’s my entire spend, right there. Over twenty bucks, on a pistol. Not likely.

Nope, I am going to have to head into the Virtual Training area and try a few things out. This allows you to get your hands on anything in the game, and use it im target practice. Finally I settle in a sub-machinegun from my own faction, which feels satisfyingly different to the assault rifle in combat, and gives me an alternative to shotguns when I am equipping for close combat. The Sirius SX12 costs me 700SC, or $8.15.

That leaves me with just over $6 to spend in our Twenty Bucks, although my slight overspend means I actually have an inconvenient 800SC. I could go for a booster pack, that would give me a short extra boost on XP gain or in-game resources, but these feel pointless to me.

I could get more cosmetic stuff for my vehicles – like the famous giraffe skin which adorns my Sunderer APCs and three-man Harasser ATVs, and acts as the official camo for the RPS outfit. But I think I’ll go for something more practical, which will have long-term use for me and my team-mates.

I’ve chosen the Harasser Proton II PPA-H, which will set on top of my ATV and can be used by the gunner-seat passenger to spit fiery blue death on our enemies. A pretty good purchase, I discover, as I race about with a chum. I can’t hit the side of a barn with it, but oh well. I’ll just have to drive.

So what does twenty bucks get us?

A new helmet, which is entirely cosmetic – $5.80
A new assault rifle, which is meat and shooty – $8.15
And a new gun for my Harasser – $8.15

I overspent a bit, thanks to SOE’s virtual currency, but it’s close enough. Do I feel like that was worth $20? Well, not really, and I think that’s the issue with SOE’s current prices. I could buy an indie game (probably several) for this sort of price, which does not encourage me to sink cash into Planetside 2. I really like SOE’s mixed approach – with people able to mix certs and cash at their leisure – but I can’t help thinking that the cost of everything in the shop makes mad spending unlikely. The only real attraction, as far as I can see, are the station cash sales, where the value of SC’s currency gets slashed for a limited time, making everything cheaper. Trade purely on those, and the items in Planetside 2 seem a little more worthwhile.

Were the game to offer everything at half the price it is now, well, I’d probably spend far more. I can only concede that they’ll have to keep tempting me with those sales.

My viewpoint of the prices are a bit different- i Just Give Them My Money so they can keep the servers up, and keep rolling out expansions. Spent half on Cosmetics. Interesting to se DoTA2 whith a Cosmetics only Free-to-Play system- so fanboys pay up for Bling Bling only. Couldn´t help but grab an Anti-Air missile launcher in Planetside 2 (well worth it, bloody scythes and reavers).

Wasn´t the pistol gold plated? sounds like a prestige kind of item to show your undying support-ish …?

One thing that I think is worth mentioning, at least here, is that though they use virtual currency, they seem to have regular enough double and even triple sales on station cash, where you can get loads of in game money for less of your real world money.

Any time those events come up, you can be sure that someone in the RPS outfit will make it known in the forums for everyone to see.

1. The Commisioner you looked at was the silly “gold-plated” version. The normal (functionally identical) version is 700 SC, just like all the other Big Fancy Weapons. Too much, definitely, but not INSANE.

2. Another way to make prices reasonable is the Station Cash sales. Before the game’s launch, they had a “three-for-one” deal, so I spent $50 on SC and thus everything in Planetside 2 was (effectively) 66% off, and (when on sale) 85% off. They have two-for-one sales semi regularly.

For those who need more info: Walmart (in the US) carries cards that cost $15 but give you $20 worth of PS2 cash. What makes them truly awesome is that redeeming them (not purchasing them, which can be difficult because there’s always a run on Walmart when this happens) during a double- or triple-cash weekend MULTIPLIES THE TOTAL.

So I bought three cards for $45 last double-cash day and got $120 in credit. Sure it’s all fake money, but that’s a hell of a satisfying deal.

It’s been a while since I’ve actually played PS2 proper, but it’s worth mentioning that there are also bundles that get you a whole bunch of stuff at a steep discount. Way back near release, between bundles and triple SC sales, I was able to get ~7 weapons and a couple of skins for ~$6, which isn’t bad at all.

I simply hate the idea of micro transactions… but they work, at least they have on me… I’ve dropped $50 on a couple of FTP games over that last couple of years and there is no way I got an entire games worth of content for that money. My decision sure, but it’s simply absurd. Even the exchange rates on most FTP games are ridiculous. Still, there is something to be said about it’s success. I still hate it though.

Yep, I’m only buying station cash when it’s on triple sales, even double station cash sales are poor value for money in my opinion, unless it’s something you can use on any empire like the Decimator or a lightning/liberator/galaxy gun.
I do have a subscription though and that brings me 500SC per month as part of the deal alongside bonus cert/exp gain so that tides me over for now.

Since the launch in November I’ve played almost 400 hours of Planetside 2. It’s the first F2P game I’ve actually played for more than an hour. I only spend 20 euros during the triple station cash deal. Everytime I boot up the game I have fun. The level of maturity of people playing this game is incredible compared to other FPS available today.

The pricing in PS2 is a bit absurd. I’m a big fan of the game, so I’ve spent about $200 solely on triple XP weekends. Even with the 50k SC I received, I still only unlocked a fraction of the weapons. I’m not spending another dime on the game because of it. However, don’t get me wrong – I still enjoy playing the game immensely.

does no one else have severe performance problems with this? To be fair all MMOs are choppy with a ton of people on screen but it’s fairly unplayable for me when assaulting a base and other people don’t seem to be having a problem. What am I doing wrong?

Got a radeon 7870 with 12gb ddr3 and an amd phenom x4 3.4ghz. Tried to play it the other week too so patched up with latest drivers. all other games run fine.

It eats CPUs for breakfast. If you hit alt+f it gives you an FPS counter, which also tells you whether it’s your GPU or CPU which is bottlenecking. For me, it’s ALWAYS the CPU. I’m using a QX9650, and any gathering of more than about 20 people brings me down to the 20-30fps range.

I’m doing OK on a 4 year old CPU, but yeah, I’ve also done stuff like turning shadows & fauna off completely to reduce system load and I do ok on performance now. Have bigger problems with the occasional bit of network lag caused by being in an area where all three empires zergs are pouring into the same territory.

Turn of shadows, they are amassive CPU hog, also look into tweaking the settings file to up some graphics settings to move more rendering to the gpu instead of the cpu. It is all kinds of stupid but it is possible to get playable fps.

Also the game does run rather crappily on AMD cpus compared to intels =(

Having played PS2 recently for a few days (and streamed it), I can safely say there is a lot wrong with this game that doesn’t make it worth spending money on. It’s definitely unique and fun, but the in game grind for items is just too dang high. The monthly subscription doesn’t really make sense as well. It gets you things faster, but would you pay $15 a month, which is the normal cost of a full fledged MMO for PS2? It doesn’t get you the full experience either, it just unlocks things slightly faster. IMO that’s part of why the game is so desolate. It’s just not fun to play 20 hours just to unlock one item in game and I don’t think SOE understands that.

You really can sum all of this up by the time/weapon, which can be easily compared to a lot of other games.

Of course they’re trying to push their in game currency, but they’re pushing it so hard it turns people off. Some of the upgrades for classes are just silly. They tier upgrades so much that it makes upgrading them feel completely unsatisfying. Putting aside weapons (which some of them cost ridiculous amounts of certs), the last tier upgrades some items (like suit upgrades) cost about 500 and 1000 certs a piece, or 1500 certs combined and that doesn’t even take into account the extra 600 you have to put in before that point. It just doesn’t feel good unlocking stuff. Unlike other games like Tribes or LoL you don’t actually feel good about earning currency and spending it because you know what you spend it on matters so little till you get all the upgrades (which is really what makes all the difference).

You know, I really think SoE has this modeled wrong. IF the monthly subscription unlocked everything in game AND gave you all the bonuses it already did, I may be inclined to actually purchase it. You know so people who spend the months subbed eventually can play completely free (at least for cert items) as a reward. I think that would be a perfect solution. I’m not paying for a full mmo experience only to get a fraction of it, that’s just silly.

All of this is putting aside all the bugs, performance issues, glitches, lag, hit reg issues, balancing issues, and silliness that is described when one side no longer looks anything like their side after purchasing half a dozen cosmetic upgrades. Most of all the lag and hit reg issues really bug me. The game doesn’t give you your ping, but you can tell sometimes you have around a 200-400ms ping. When you shoot someone point blank with a shotgun and they do the little movement animation like they’re hit, but take no damage, it really bugs me, mainly because I’m an almost exclusive shotgun user. Big battles really turn into laggy cluster-fucks and I’m not talking about FPS lag (which does suck), but you can tell their servers are really struggling to keep up.

Honestly PS2 is really weird, it has all the problems of a MMO (RPG), but doesn’t deliver the clean concise game play of a FPS… Oh and then there is the whole cheater problem they can’t take care of, but that seems normal for games online now days.

I’d have to disagree here. Unlocks are based on MMO timescales rather than online FPS’s like CoD and BF. The subscription allows you to not just unlock weapons at a faster rate, but unlock weapons and class upgrades. I’ve been playing since release and still have tons of stuff to unlock, but for my main interests (Skyguard, MAX, Medic, Inf and HA) I’ve all the gear (and no idea – as they say).

I’ve never had any lag problems (and I’m using ‘rural’ broadband here), and my framerate rarely drops below 60fps (capped at 60 using nVidia adaptive vsync – full detail minus shadows), except in huge, massive battles where it can drop to a rather mild 45fps.

As for cheating, only seen three genuine hackers in the last six months.

Thanks for this guide to spending in Planetside 2. It’s amazing how I want to just give my money to a company for making a game I enjoy, even when I don’t have to.

This an important lesson for developers of AAA titles. Make something good, and people will gladly give you money. Make something that’s not worth the price and you get people who are angry and who care less about playing actual legitimate versions of your next title.

If Criterion came out with Burnout Paradise 2 tomorrow, I’d write a check tonight without even thinking about it. Same with Arkham Whatever that’s coming out soon. Because I have a reasonable expectation that those games will be worth it, given how much enjoyment and entertainment they will provide per dollar.

i’m going to throw in another problem with PS2 items. You are not buying a static piece of equipment. Perhaps you want to be a good close assault heavy trooper, so you buy the gun thats best for this. The gun you just bought could either be nerfed, or supplanted by a newer gun that does that role better in the not very distant future. Given that SOE wants to maintain spending over invested players its in their interests to keep finding new reasons for you to buy new guns.

I agree that the base weapons are pretty solid. However i do think the base weapons lack a really decent anti air option. a single burster doesn’t really cut it. You can buy this with certs but it will take you a good few hours to grind to get it.

Personally i’ve just bought Station Cash when they’ve done a 1/2 price offer and then bought weapon bundles. Its worked out ok. I have most of what i wanted at £40ish investment. I’ve played over 100 hours of the game, but id rather have just payed a one time get all stuff for normal game price deal.

The Corvus and the Ursa have been my favourite buys, along with the Skyguard and extra burster for the MAX (and killing Daddy before he logs out)… oh, and the two Comets which are now even shootier with the ZOE.

I was really enjoying the Phantom Sniper Rifle until they took away its ADS autofire. And that is one of the biggest gripes about paying for stuff; when they change it to something you don’t want.

The Saron Laser Pointer is the most recent example. Some people hate the new version and feel, quite reasonably in my opinion, ripped off; F’d in the A if you take my meaning. However, some people like the new version and many have plonked down smedbucks on the newer version.

Fortunately, I can get a new weapon every week just using certs if I wanted to. A subscription is definately the best use of money, as it is in most F2P games.

At least there’s really is no Play to Win element in PS2. Some weapons are better than others, but only in particular areas when compared with the standard weapon. I go for the heavier calibre weapons that are usually more accurate, yet have a much slower rate of fire. It suits my style of play, especially when playing as a medic. And as most people will know, you can often earn XP much faster as a support class in a firefight than the assault classes.

If you’re going to spend real cash, treat yourself to some cool cosmetic items (which can’t get nerfed or changed) and check out the daily ‘sale’.

The subscription is especially nice if you run multiple characters, because you can log into each one once a day and get up to 48 free cert points due to the subscription level (1-6 months, the award varies depending on how long the subscription is rated for, AKA, if you bought 3 month it ranks you as 3 month sub level rather than you having to actually wait those 3 months, which is nice… I’ve probably explained it badly, the subscription level isn’t based on how many months you’ve been subscribed but rather how long it’ll be ’til the subscription is due to end)

Honest question – how old are you guys? I’m 30 and married, and while I love PC games and read this site every day (at work), I don’t have hours every day to devote to gaming. Maybe 30 minutes a night, and a few hours between Saturday and Sunday, but often even less than that.

Are there people in their 30’s really spending 90 minutes a night gaming, every single night? I just don’t see how it’s done!

Maybe not every single night, but I used to know a lot of 30-somethings who managed an MMO. Depends on how demanding your job is in terms of overtime, how far you live from work (people who commute 2 hours each way are crazy), and what other hobbies you have. Oh, and need for sleep. Known at least one guy who could easily stay awake till 4 am, sleep 3-4 hours and arrive at work all fresh and ready.

edit: forgot. Food makes a big difference too. Between cooking, cleaning, and washing up, I can imagine many people manage to fill their entire evening just getting fed.

1. Buy as many Walmart SC cards as you want to spend on the game: link to walmart.com These give you an extra 500 SC each.

2. Wait until the next triple SC day and redeem the cards. They will give you 6000 SC each. Next triple SC day is expected to be July 4th.

3. Buy weapons when they go on sale. Almost every weapon except for the newest ones will go on sale. This twitter account gives the daily deals: link to twitter.com MAX weapons are probably the only ones currently that are worth it to buy at full price.

4. Compare the Cert cost with the SC cost. Both prices will come up when you go to purchase the weapon. It will be different for everyone, but I don’t buy weapons unless the SC cost is at least close to half of the cert cost. If the cert cost is lower, you are probably getting ripped off.

5. Try out the weapons you want to buy with the trials or in the VR room. Many weapons only have minor stat differences between them and are pointless to buy. It’s really only worth it to get one weapon from each style. For example, one SMG, one Pump Action Shotgun, etc.

6. Only buy XP boosts on double XP weekends. On those days, it doubles your XP after applying the boost, so it’s basically tripling your XP. The only exception would be if you are really low level and want to put certs in things that you can’t buy with money. Otherwise, you probably won’t make your SC’s worth in Certs unless you play a lot or are really good.

7. As far as gaining Certs in game goes, sitting around in bases and waiting for them to cap is the worst way to go about it, even with the 1000 xp for the bigger bases.

First of it all, I’m NC, so I’ll speak from my faction PoV.
This game has MUCH content affordable with real cash, so much people usually get lost (me first!).
This is because you can actually play 6 classes + 7-8 veichles. If you start taking in consideration some “sub classes” (infiltrator can be played both as Sniper or Hacker – MAX can be CQC anti-inf, or anti-aircraft, or even anti-tank machines) the choices quickly start ramping.
But you need to take a grip on what actually you want to play.
You have 2000 SC, which are not too little. Yes, still 3 weapons will cost you 2100 SC, technically “ranging out” of your budget, but i’ll try addressing 2 good weapon choices only.

First step: some “stock” weapons are good.
Really, they are VERY good, to the point you don’t need to change them during your whole play experience. (NC stock SR, the BoltDriver, is among the best SR ingame).

Second step: have you chosen your side?
Sometimes people wants to play on the 3 empires to “try everything”. Sometimes, they just want to stick with one side. These are completely different stories. If you “cross-faction”, then getting an NS weapon or two might be good, because you can have them on ALL your charas. NS-11A is a GREAT pick, even if limited to medics, it rocks so hard you can farm certs with it the whole day. If you’ll stick with a single empire, than a “multi-class” weapon is the way to go. These are: SubMachineGuns (aviable to all – except MAX) and Shotguns (all – except Infiltrator & MAX). This way, you’ll have a good CQC weapon to play in the “urban” scenarios like techlabs and biolabs. Choose one, and you’ll be good.
For now, we have spent 700 SC (on NS-11A or on a SMG/shottie), gearing your 3 cross-faction medics with the best, or giving your Engi-LightAssa-Medic-Infi a great weapon to go close & personal with their enemies.

Third step: which type of player you are?
Because, while it’s technically impossible to avoid CQC, here things start differentiating. A LOT.
Do you like air vehicles? Anti-infantry missile-pods will allow you to take down squads of enemies with your light jet.
Do you prefer land veichles? You start with a good all-rounder cannon, but you can upgrade with a more anti-armor one.
Do you want to feel the “real” heat of battle? Get another anti-infantry MAX weapon (you should already have one). Dual-scatter MAXes are lot of fun into BIO-LABS, while ZOE (VS MAXes) are really great at all ranges.
Do you want to be a sniper REALLY BAD? Well, if you are NC – no problems there. Otherwise, get a good bolt action sniper rifle.
Now, we spend the second 700 SC:
– Dual Photon-Pods / Breaker Rocket-Pods / Hellfire Rocket-Pods for Air-Maniacz
– L100 Python-AP for the Cross-Factioners (to mount on lightning) P2-120AP/Titan-150 AP/Supernova FPC for the Land-Pilots!
– Scattercannon (or Mattock)/ Quasar (or Blueshift)/ Heavy Cycler (or Mercy) for you MAXes that wants to go nuts against infantry
– M77-B or XM98 for TR/VS wannabe snipers.

Fourth Step: why am I not talking about Carabines?
Well, they are great weapons used by 2 intriguing classes, the Engineer (infinite ammos!) and the Light Assault (he DAMN flies!!). First because I find Light Assault usually more suited with Shotgun during his “I fly in ur base” job. Second, because stock Carabines are really good and don’t need replacements with real money, imho.

Fifth Step: we still have 600 SC.
I would say: wait till a discount and get something else from point 3, but I see you love customizations, soooooo…
– for 250 SC you get a “cool armor” for one class, meaning you can unlock the armor for 2 Classes. (No cross-factioning love here)
– for 250-600 SC you can get an helmet for one class, so if you are maniac about a single one, you can get armor + helmet for it! (No cross-factioning love here)
– for 500 SC you can get an Infantry Camo – I’d say Esamir Snow or Esamir Ice, always good to blend with the environment! (YAY cross factioning!)

And that’s all. Giving the whole trip a look, I’d say you got quite a good return on your 20 bucks; one “generic” but dominating weapon, one “playstyle-oriented” weapon, and one customization. And this is a great point to start with. You filled some “holes” provided in the F2P pattern, now all you need is playing and Cert-ing your favorite guns, vehicles and classes. Enjoy!!

I think the whole triple SC thing makes people who don’t buy at the right time feel enormously ripped off. That can’t be good for sales. Then again, almost everyone who plays this for a certain amount of time seems to end up spending real money on skins etc., so their business model seems to be working. As someone who is a bit more cheap, I can verify that it’s still fun to play without spending that cash, though it was a bit boring in the beginning (some basic certs here and there make a big difference).

The author could have gotten a lot more for his money. For that 2000 SC, I could have acquired at least 17 top tier weapons. In PS2 you just never ever pay full price for anything if you’re smart. The full price system is just designed for rich kids, fan boys and impulse buyers. Other players should just wait for Triple SC day and for a gun to go on 50% sale.

If you play it a lot, 6 month subscription is totally good value: Lots of XP, 500 SC a month, more gun sales and limited continent queue.
Otherwise, besides cosmetics, only invest in 700 SC/1000 Cert weapons. Cheaper stuff can be easily grinded in a day or so. And said, buy this stuff only with Triple SC when it’s on 50% sale. A 700 SC gun will cost you only 115 SC that way. Next Triple SC day will be on 4th of July.
Bundle sales can be good value too btw.

You should review AirMech (www.carbongames.com) next. It is a great game with fair prices (see AirMech Prime bundle for 19,99 USD for example).
I uploaded some videos of AirMech (www.tinyurl.com/AirMechHD) if you are interested.

AirMech used to be good; bought the Steam starter pack for myself and some buddies. But more recently they’ve redone the UI into a complete mess (Owned an unowned units on completely separate interfaces? What?), added a third levelling system, some weird crafting mechanic, and honest-to-go straight-faced TF2-style crate drops with one-use purchasable keys.

And co-op vs bot matchmaking worked for a couple months and has now been broken for something like a year, dropping you into 3v3 PVP instead (although the party leader will still see the co-op lobby).

As far as I know they have a good contact to Valve and they are often getting advices from them, so that explains the key system. All in all the game is still in Beta and will improve as it goes. I have been playing since Alpha and must say it got better overall.

Why is there so much worry on money being put into the game by users? SOE model for this particular game is to have a large enough user base so that they could start selling discreet ads at certain places. Can you imagine the impact of a Pepsi billboard in – game? If you really wanted to pay and play go ahead and do a bf4! a free game is meant to be FREE.